AA: Jules Verne's novel The Mysterious Island has constantly inspired film-makers since the silent age. This 1961 film adaptation, which belongs to the remarkable fantasy film series created by the team of Charles H. Schneer, Ray Harryhausen and Bernard Herrmann, is a solid, well-made fantasy film. It was screened at Cinema Orion in the context of our Cinema and Music lecture series, and the lecturer, the composer Mr. Pessi Levanto, had selected it for our series as a sample of the work of Bernard Herrmann - as a less obvious showcase of Herrmann's ability to create a unique sound world for each film.

Among Herrmann's main modes were "the sound of mental disturbance" and "the sound of fantasy adventure escape", both brilliantly in evidence for instance in the overture of On Dangerous Ground. Mysterious Island is a delightful example of the latter mode, Herrmann's fantasy inspiration - there are sounds that are thrilling, suspenseful, stormy, exotic, and droll.

Ray Harryhausen's creations provide much of the fascination: - the balloon caught in the biggest storm in American history that brings our Civil War refugees to a lost island in the Pacific - the giant crab, bird, bees and octopus - the pirate ship - Nautilus - and the volcanic eruption that causes the island to perish utterly. The miniatures, the stop motion animation, and the travelling mattes are not photorealistically smooth, but there is an endearing quality in their handcrafted artistry that is charming like in the work of Georges Méliès. My favourite Harryhausen sequence here is the one with the giant honeycomb where the young lovers are trapped. (Honey trap!).

The actors are not of the first rank, but Herbert Lom brings a quality of dignity to his performance as Captain Nemo, as does Joan Greenwood to hers as Lady Fairchild.

Cy Endfield's direction is sober and matter-of-fact which befits a fantasy adventure. We do not need visual and directorial flourishes in a story as outlandish as this. Mysterious Island is a satisfying fantasy adventure: we expect storms, giant monsters, ingenious devices, pirates, and volcanic eruptions from such a fairy-tale. Is there a sense of wonder? Yes, there is.

Mysterious Island is an original Robinsonade. The men and women work together for survival, for creating some comfort, and for building a vessel to escape. Although there is no psychological depth in the characters, there is a sense of team effort. The aspect of young love remains on the level of nice smiles and some cheesecake & beefcake.

At its most profound, Mysterious Island reminds us of Captain Nemo's pessimism about the self-destructive urge of mankind about to destroy itself via war. There is a subtext in Jules Verne's Nemo stories about the death drive. But Mysterious Island also reminds us of Captain Nemo's optimism about more effective nourishment via his incredible inventions. Better technology could be an alternative to a Neo-Darwinian battle of the survival of the strongest, and to a Hobbesian world of bellum omnium contra omnes.

Mysterious Island is both a Dystopian story about the end of the world and a Utopian story about how we can save ourselves via technology.

A worn vintage print with a duped look yet watchable and with a sense of the original colour.

Official introduction: "Haunted Screens: German Cinema in the 1920s explores masterworks of German Expressionist cinema. From the stylized fantasy of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (dir. Robert Wiene, 1919) to the chilling murder mystery M (dir. Fritz Lang, 1931), cinema during the liberal Weimar era was innovative in aesthetic, psychological, and technical terms."

"Organized by La Cinémathèque française, Paris, the exhibition features over 150 drawings, as well as manuscripts, posters, and set models, the majority gathered by Lotte Eisner, German emigrée film historian and author of the pioneering 1952 text The Haunted Screen. Additional works come from the collections of LACMA’s Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies and from the archives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Kino Ektoplasma—a three-screen installation created for the exhibition by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson—resurrects lost films of the Expressionist era in mesmerizing film sequences. The exhibition was designed by Amy Murphy and Michael Maltzan with Michael Maltzan Architecture, Inc."

"In Los Angeles, Haunted Screens is presented by LACMA in association with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and is generously supported by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and Riza Aziz." (Official introduction).

AA: On display as an art exhibition some of the most legendary images from the German cinema before 1933, inspired by Lotte Eisner's groundbreaking art historical book L'Écran démoniaque, many of the images familiar from her book itself, but also with dozens of less known ones.

I did not see the original La Cinémathèque française edition of this exhibition, and this is a revised edition anyway with many works added from LACMA's own collections. This is a tribute to the great art of Hermann Warm, Otto Hunte, and their colleagues, who here can be appreciated not only as designers of unforgettable sketches but also as masters of the charcoal, pencil, watercolour, oil, and gouache. The sensual, aching quality of their art, expressionist, Neue Sachlichkeit or otherwise, comes into its own.

This exhibition is a part of the LACMA's long-term dedicated project of Expressionism and German culture, building on the Robert Gore Rifkind collection and other sources of their own. I had also the privilege to visit the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies and see samples of their fantastic collections of German graphic art before 1933.

Built in 2002, The Grove is now a quintessential Los Angeles phenomenon, an artificial paradise and a shopping center that has been compared with Rodeo Drive, the Universal CityWalk and Disneyland.

The last time I visited, the most famous Farmers Market of Los Angeles was still intact (there are some 50 Farmers Markets in L.A., but this is the best-known) and it still seems to thrive, incorporated now into the extravagant shopping theme park.

The Grove is an entertainment tour dedicated to consumption, today with a beautifully designed Chinese New Year theme. The bright red illumation of the stylish dragon and sheep ornaments dazzle as darkness falls.

When I lived in L.A. the Universal CityWalk had recently opened, and it was amusing to realize that in this city you need a specially constructed space to actually to enjoy a walk on a city street. The same applies to The Grove.

Bookstores thrived in Los Angeles twenty years ago. One could spend a day in them on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica or in the Media City Center in Burbank. Now they are in death throes thanks to the black plague of culture called Amazon. I ask friends for advice on bookstores in L.A. now and get three:

1. Barnes & Noble - The Grove. For books in general. A fine grand full service bookstore, also with music and dvd / blu-ray departments. Three floors.

2. The Iliad Bookshop. 5400 Cahuenga Boulevard, North Hollywood, CA 91601 (Corner of Cahuenga and Chandler Blvds.). Good for film books and out of print books.

3. Larry Edmunds Bookshop, 6644 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA, 90028. In business over 70 years, (one of) the most legendary film bookshop(s) is still with us.

I was determined to visit all three, but distances are overwhelming. I need to return soon again.

Official synopsis: "During the winter of 1952, British authorities entered the home of mathematician, cryptanalyst and war hero Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) to investigate a reported burglary. They instead ended up arresting Turing himself on charges of ‘gross indecency’, an accusation that would lead to his devastating conviction for the criminal offense of homosexuality – little did officials know, they were actually incriminating the pioneer of modern-day computing. Famously leading a motley group of scholars, linguists, chess champions and intelligence officers, he was credited with cracking the so-called unbreakable codes of Germany's World War II Enigma machine. An intense and haunting portrayal of a brilliant, complicated man, The Imitation Game follows a genius who under nail-biting pressure helped to shorten the war and, in turn, save thousands of lives. Directed by Morten Tyldum with a screenplay by Graham Moore, the film stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard, Charles Dance and Mark Strong." (Official synopsis from the Production Notes).

AA: A well-made mainstream biopic with special insight in WWII, foreign intelligence, and the birth of the computer. A character-driven story firmly grounded in history and the evolution of information technology. The subject, Alan Turing, is considered the "Father of Theoretical Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence" (Wikipedia).

Compared with The Imitation Game, the simultaneous British success film of a troubled genius, The Theory of Everything is feelgood entertainment. The Imitation Game is a tragedy. The British government, having benefitted immensely from Alan Turing's insight during the war, poisons him with hormons to "cure" him of homosexuality.

The screenplay is intelligent, discussing ever-relevant themes about human and artificial intelligence.

The Imitation Game is also a different kind of a war film. We are in one of the centers where the outcome of the war was settled. Although we are far from the front, we often sense the immediacy of the war. There are telling details such as a brief shot of a legless war invalid, which convey the general horror quite powerfully.

A puzzling aspect is the ethical dilemma of war. Not all discoveries could be put to use, because that would have exposed to the Nazis the fact that the Enigma had been cracked.

The codebreaking philosophy has wide-ranging implications. "How's that different from normal people talking. They never say what they mean". As an outsider, Alan Turing has been able to make observations like that.

The Imitation Game will be remembered as the film about the first computer. The film creation, here called Christopher, is bigger and more exciting than the real thing, almost a character in its own right.

The characters are contradictory in a way that feels true to life, but there is a mainstream (Weinstein?) polish in the production. For instance the talented and incredibly prolific Alexandre Desplat has here composed a conventional score that I feel simplifies the emotional flow.

As a Finn I start to think that an interesting film could be made of WWII Finnish codebreakers, too. And also of the Stella Polaris operation of rescuing intelligence abroad when the war was about to end.

THE LONG SYNOPSIS, MATTERS OF ACCURACY AND TONY SALE'S ARTICLE "THE BREAKING OF ENIGMA BY POLISH MATHEMATICIANS" AFTER THE JUMP BREAK

The Film Archive and Preservation Center. Photo: BAR Architects. Click to enlarge

The BAR Architects presentation: "Located on a 64.5 acre site in Santa Clarita, The Film Archive and Preservation Center provides the highest standards of preservation and storage for one of the most significant collections of film and television moving images in the world. The buildings are designed to preserve the park-like setting of the oak tree savanna hillsides and maximize views to create a quality workplace. The project includes a film preservation laboratory, digital moving image and audio preservation laboratory, film video and paper storage archive, central plant and staff offices adjoining the existing underground nitrate film storage vaults.""Client: Packard Humanities InstituteArchitect: BAR ArchitectsTotal Site Area: 64.5 AcresTotal Planned Area: 226,400 gsfProject Components:Two 20-Seat Screening RoomsDigital, Moving Image and Audio PreservationLaboratoryFilm, Video and Digital Archives StorageNitrate Film VaultsCentral PlantGallery Exhibit SpaceResearch and Study CenterOffices"
- BAR Architects

"The new building will be comprised of two distinct parts, the Collection Storage and the Stoa. The Collection Storage portion is a large, unobtrusive, functional structure—primarily underground—housing temperature and humidity controlled collection storage vaults, collection services, loading dock, film lab facilities and a central plant for the entire project. The Stoa, inspired by ancient Greek Stoas with two story colonnades, is an L-shaped structure housing the preservation labs, work rooms, preservationists’ offices and administrative functions. The interior architecture recalls motifs from the Florentine monastery of San Marco and is designed to inspire the preservationist’s work. The palette of materials is Mediterranean with terracotta roof tiles, light-colored precast columns and walls, terracotta floors, plaster walls with parking located beneath an olive orchard." (Architecture MMXII)

AA: An amazing place: state-of-the-art film archiving in an architectural setting that is faithful to the Classical vision, even utilizing Italian marble. A tribute to the craft and profession of film archiving. The buildings are there, and the installation of the equipment is going on. The premises will house the giant collections of the UCLA Film and Television Archive; many of their treasures are here already. Perfection in every detail: high quality premises can inspire high quality work. While marvelling at the view we notice condors patrolling the sky.*

* Evidence of the success of the California Condor Recovery Plan. Some 30 years ago there were no wild condors left in California; all survivors lived in captivity.

The exhibition catalogue: Deborah Nadoolman Landis: Hollywood Costume. First published by V&A Publishing, London, 2012. Published in America by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills. 320 large pages, high quality illustrations.

The official intro: "The Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences present the final showing of the groundbreaking multimedia exhibition Hollywood Costume in the historic Wilshire May Company Building, the future location of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. Organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, this ticketed exhibition explores the central role of costume design–from the glamorous to the very subtle–as an essential tool of cinematic storytelling. On view October 2, 2014 through March 2, 2015 the exhibition brings together the world's most iconic costumes from the Golden Age of cinema to the present."

"The Academy is enhancing the V&A's exhibition and includes more than 150 costumes. The Academy's presentation added more than 40 costumes to this landmark show, including Jared Leto's costume from Dallas Buyers Club (Kurt and Bart, 2013) – a recent acquisition from the Academy's Collection – as well as costumes from such recent releases including The Hunger Games (Judianna Makovsky, 2012), Django Unchained (Sharen Davis, 2012), Lee Daniels' The Butler (Ruth E. Carter, 2013), The Wolf of Wall Street (Sandy Powell, 2013), American Hustle (Michael Wilkinson, 2013), and The Great Gatsby (Catherine Martin, 2013)."

"In addition, Hollywood Costume showcases the Academy's pair of the most famous shoes in the world – the original ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz (Adrian, 1939) shown with Dorothy's blue and white gingham pinafore dress."

"Hollywood Costume is curated by Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Academy Award®–nominated costume designer and founding director of UCLA’s David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design, whose credits include National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Coming to America (1988) and the music video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (1983); with Sir Christopher Frayling (Professor Emeritus of Cultural History, Royal College of Art), and set and costume designer and V&A Assistant Curator Keith Lodwick."

"Swarovski is the presenting sponsor of Hollywood Costume.Additional support is provided by Pirelli and the Blavatnik Family Foundation.In-kind support provided by Barco, ARRI, JBL and Samsung."

AA: Many of the obvious choices are here, as they should be, and it is hard to imagine the amount of work needed in putting all these precious and legendary pieces together.

I admire Deborah Nadoolman Landis's artistic concept and the execution of the huge show. The word that comes to mind is eloquent. This is a history of the American cinema seen through costume design. Costume drama can be heavy, but the vision here is guided by wit. Martin Scorsese sums it up: "Costume is character". It is all about costume, and it is all about character.

There is a dramaturgy in this exhibition, most excitingly in a series of dialogues orchestrated between the director and the costume designer, seen on vertical screens facing each other: - Edith Head and Alfred Hitchcock - Sandy Powell and Martin Scorsese - Ann Roth and Mike Nichols - and Colleen Atwood and Tim Burton.

Of the obvious exhibits, Charles Chaplin's tramp costume is for me especially poignant in this context, among all this splendour. Last year in Le Giornate del Cinema Muto the mayor of Pordenone commented that it is a sad fact that the Tramp is a more topical figure today than a generation ago.

Two costumes from Alfred Hitchcock's movies linger in my mind. The vibrant, rich, full green of the costume of Judy Barton (Kim Novak) in Vertigo, and the eau de Nil green of Melanie Daniels's (Tippi Hedren) costume in The Birds. Green is my favourite colour, but it almost always fails in clothes although it never fails in nature. My interpretation of the secret of the green is that in nature it is not a single colour at all but a combination of dozens of shades that are permanently changing. Yet green can in exceptional cases succeed in costumes, and those two Edith Head-Alfred Hitchcock creations are among them.

"The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is building the world's leading movie museum in the heart of Los Angeles. Located in the historic Wilshire May Company building on the campus of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the six stories Academy Museum was greenlighted by the Academy's Board of Governors in October 2012." (From the official Academy site).

They are all set to build a new magnificent movie museum for the Motion Picture Academy on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. It can definitely become the international landmark.

Meanwhile, there is still a chance to visit the superb Hollywood Costume exhibition in the current museum space here, curated by Deborah Nadoolman Landis.

Sunday, February 08, 2015

I have not been in Los Angeles in 19 years. My first impression: it is still the same, only more so.

My friends tell me the traffic is still getting heavier all the time, and Los Angeles keeps spreading out. But now we have GPS navigators. They are amazingly helpful. I plan my way with a combination of an internet route map and a GPS navigator, and they do make life simpler.

At breakfast I buy the morning papers, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times, still classical quality papers, but now slimmer, thinner, and narrower. I remember how startled I was when I saw for the first time a Sunday edition of an American quality newspaper, the size of a telephone directory. That is long gone.

Everything they say about Hollywood is true. But the glamour is but the surface, never to be trusted.

What I'm interested in is in line with John Ford's concept when he planned a film about Hollywood, never realized. He wanted to make a movie about the Hollywood professional. Here are many of the finest professionals and craftsmen of the cinema and the media world.

In the garden of a little old quiet restaurant bungalow in the heart of Hollywood, not far from the thunder of the freeways, I look at the tree top and see hummingbirds.

AA: A humoristic rhapsody covering the summer of three young women of 25 years of age, working as summer waitresses in the seaside holiday paradise of Hanko. There is a relaxed approach, and no sense of a tightly knit plot or structure. It is a character-driven and performance-driven movie in which the director Inari Niemi and her sister, the screenwriter Juuli Niemi explore the space of young women in a kind of narrative usually dominated by a male viewpoint. It all starts with appearances and poses. While they crumble true substances of characters emerge. Iiris (Anna Paavilainen) usually works as a waitress in Spain but returns to Finland for the summer. Karoliina (Iina Kuustonen) is a bright student with no fixed career plan yet. The slow-witted and absent-minded Eeva (Minka Kuustonen) has severe issues of focus and concentration. Iiris's big sister Hertta (Pihla Viitala) tells a horror story about having a baby, adding it's the best thing ever, and that she is going to have another one. The happy family life of Hertta and Akseli is a contrast to the partying; the marriage inferno of Tommy and Linda (Matleena Kuusniemi) is another kind of contrast. Both Iiris and aunt Liisa are living abroad, contemplating about the possibility of returning to Finland. A point of gravity is about gravidity: Iiris is afraid of having been gotten pregnant by Jussi. Meanwhile, Linda fails to get pregnant by Tommy although they keep trying. There is a nadir of desperation when everything fails and the three girlfriends even start to fight one another. Things begin to get settled, but there is a mild letdown in the way the film proceeds to the conclusion.

AFTER THE JUMP BREAK: THE TEXT FROM THE KESÄKAVERIT MEDIA INFO AND THE SOUNDTRACK

Search This Blog

About Me

Antti Alanen (born 1955) is Film Programmer at National Audiovisual Institute (Finland), which runs the Cinema Orion in Helsinki. This diary is an irregular notebook and scrapbook of rough notes on films and related matters.

Jazz Record of the Week 29/2017

Jazz Record of the Week 29/2017

Freddie Redd Quartet: The Music from The Connection [1960] (Freddie Redd Six Classic Albums 2/6)

Jazz Record of the Week 29/2017

Introducing Freddie Redd (Freddie Redd Six Classic Albums 1/6)

Jazz Record of the Week 28/2017

Kenny Dorham: Jazz Contrasts

Jazz Record of the Week 20/2017

Joe Henderson: Page One

Jazz Record of the Week 17/2017

Miroslav Vitouš: The Bass

Jazz Records of the Week 16/2017

Billie Holiday: All or Nothing at All (5 Original Albums 5/5)

Jazz Records of the Week 16/2017

Billie Holiday: Stay with Me (5 Original Albums 4/5)

Jazz Records of the Week 16/2017

Billie Holiday: Songs for Distingué Lovers (5 Original Albums 3/5)

Jazz Records of the Week 16/2017

Billie Holiday: Body and Soul (5 Original Albums 2/5)

Jazz Records of the Week 16/2017

Billie Holiday: Lady Sings the Blues (5 Original Albums Box Set 1/5)

Jazz Record of the Week 14/2017

The Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin: The Inner Mounting Flame

Jazz Record of the Week 13/2017

Eero Koivistoinen: For Children

Jazz Record of the Week 8/2017

John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman

Jazz Record of the Week 7/2017

Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: In a Mellotone

Jazz Record of the Week 6/2017

Duke Ellington: Piano Reflections

Jazz Record of the Week 5/2017

Miles Davis: Bitches Brew

Jazz Record of the Week 4/2017

Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus

Jazz Record of the Week 3/2017

Dollar Brand Quartet: Africa – Tears and Laughter

Jazz Record of the Week 52/2016

Albert Ayler: Goin' Home

Jazz Record of the Week 49/2016

Charles Lloyd: Forest Flower, live at Monterey

Jazz Record of the Week 48/2016

Sinikka Oksanen, Antero Stenberg, Radio Sessions 1959-1966

Jazz Record of the Week 47/2016

Django Reinhardt Vol. 6: 1940: Nuages

Jazz Record of the Week 43/2016

The Essence of Louis Armstrong (Phontastic, Sweden, 1987)

Jazz Record of the Week 42/2016

Tomasz Stańko: Balladyna

Jazz Record of the Week 39/2016

Cannonball Adderley: Somethin' Else

Jazz Record of the Week 38/2016

Tommy Flanagan Trio: Overseas

Jazz Record of the Week 37/2016

Miles Davis: Miles Smiles

Jazz Record of the Week 36/2016

Red Garland Trio: Groovy

Jazz Record of the Week 35/2016

John Coltrane: My Favorite Things

Jazz Record of the Week 34/2016

The Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Out

Jazz Record of the Week 33/2016

Christian Schwindt Quintet: For Friends and Relatives

Jazz Record of the Week 32/2016

Carola & Heikki Sarmanto Trio

Jazz Record of the Week 25/2016

Cecil Taylor: Silent Tongues

Jazz Record of the Week 24/2016

Sonny Rollins: A Night at the Village Vanguard (1957, 2 cd reissue 2016)

Jazz Record of the Week 23/2016

Charlie Mingus: Blues & Roots

Jazz Record of the Week 22/2016

Mal Waldron: Moods

Jazz Record of the Week 21/2016

Django Bates: Belovèd Bird

Jazz Record of the Week 20/2016

Jacques Loussier Trio: The Original Play Bach Vols. 1 & 2

Jazz Record of the Week 19/2016

Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges: Side by Side

Jazz Record of the Week 18/2016

Ray Charles: Genius+Soul=Jazz. Complete 1956-1960 Sessions with Quincy Jones (Genius+Soul=Jazz, The Genius of Ray Charles, The Genius Hits the Road, and from The Great Ray Charles and The Genius After Hours)